Dry Riverbeds and Rustic Dreams

            Traveling through the Campo was a sobering experience for me. Even as a lifelong resident of Mississippi, I can’t claim to have ever seen such impoverished and isolated communities in my whole life. Just like many small towns in the American plains, these communities have dried up like their water sources, and now see their ways of life, practiced as long as the residents can remember, existentially threatened. As the residents informed us, they feel abandoned by the Morales government, which claimed initially to be the first administration dedicated to the needs of indigenous and rural Bolivians. Many have already fled these dying communities to go to La Paz or El Alto, often finding even more challenging conditions then those they left. Those that have remained behind often have to depend on urban family members sending back remittances that can scarcely be afforded. It is hard to imagine that any but the most stubborn campesinos see their lifestyles persisting more than another decade at most. Even with the improvement projects of groups like the Suyana Foundation, unless the climate or infrastructure surrounding these destitute communities somehow changes, their president predicament is untenable. However, one’s vision of oneself and one’s identity are very strongly associated with the way of life that one inhabits. Many of these residents likely feel as though they would lose something integral to themselves if they gave up the sheltering sky under which they have labored since their youth in exchange for a tiny, huddled apartment in a sprawling and unfamiliar city. Additionally, a fair handful cannot speak Spanish confidently, having been raised in a closed community of Aymara speakers. With all these odds against them, somehow, these communities still persist. Some family members still return to aid in the harvest. Plans are made to draw tourists and restore local churches in hopes of drawing some extra income. Petitions are made for the government to construct improved highways to their towns. Some of these hopes show promise, but others are pipe dreams. In the long run, this question must eventually be asked by researchers and the campesinos themselves: are they willing to move away from their homes and give up their previous way of life if no solutions are found, or would they prefer to fight the elements and passage of time to the bitter end, whatever that may be?